California Western’s Prof. Tabrez Ebrahim has been awarded a Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship for 2019 from the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at the Antonin Scalia Law School on the campus of George Mason University.

Now in its sixth iteration, CPIP’s Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship is a year-long non-resident fellowship program that brings together a group of scholars to develop research papers on innovation or patent law and policy.

“It’s an honor and exciting to be selected by senior intellectual property law scholars,” says Prof. Ebrahim.

The Edison Fellowship is one of the centerpieces of CPIP's programs in promoting rigorous, data-driven, high-quality research on innovation policy and intellectual property.

As an Edison Fellow, Prof. Ebrahim will work on developing a particular research project. He will engage in roundtable discussions, hear presentations by expert scholars, inventors, and industry representatives. As the program progresses, he will share and collaborate on their research and drafts.

One of the potential research areas that Prof. Ebrahim is considering is how artificial intelligence shapes and is influenced by patent law. “I’m keeping a broad view of it for now. I might narrow it later as I progress in the Edison Innovation Fellowship,” he says.

Prof. Ebrahim will discuss and develop his research over the course of four Edison meetings, April 2019 through January 2020. The Fellowship culminates in the production of substantial academic research papers that are published in law journals or other peer-reviewed academic journals.

Prof. Ebrahim believes the Edison Innovation Fellowship will help him develop a strong research stream. “I plan to write a law review article from my research,” he says. “Subsequently I plan to have several follow-up articles in the same field as the one from the Edison Innovation Fellowship.”

His students at California Western will also benefit from Prof. Ebrahim’s research as he plans to utilize it in his teachings.

“I plan to share my research in some of my IP classes, such as Patent Law and Transactional IP, as well as with any students who are interested in learning more about IP law,” he says.

The Edison Innovation Fellowship is the second award Prof. Ebrahim has received this year. Earlier in the month, he was awarded a Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to Saudi Arabia with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.